Commentary for June 10, 2019:

Happy Pride, once again!

It’s time for the second instalment in my drawings for Pride this year, in which I’m drawing LGBTQ+ characters who appear in my comic, Eon’s World. This time, it’s Tekno the Canary.

Tekno, of course, is a Sonic the Hedgehog character, who was introduced in Fleetway’s Sonic the Comic, beginning as a minor support character and later becoming a fully fledged member of the Freedom Fighters, often teaming up for adventures with Amy Rose. They also had a very small cameo one time in Archie’s Sonic the Hedgehog. They have not yet appeared in either volume of Eon’s World, but they will be a recurring character in Vol. 1, and are scheduled to debut as a member of the Freedom Fighters in Chapter 18. (I also hope to include them in future chapters of Vol. 2, but those plans are much less concrete at this time.)

Now, to be fair, Tekno was not cast as non-binary in Sonic the Comic, so this is a bit of artistic license rationalised by Death of the Author on my part. But you also have to remember that Tekno was introduced in the mid 90’s, when there was a lot more hostility towards the LGBTQ+ community in the UK, and even amongst the queer community, trans and non-binary people were often overlooked or outright shunned. Moreover, even if Tekno’s creator, Lew Stringer had imagined his character to be non-binary (and I don’t imagine he did), I expect the editors would have been unwilling to allow it in a publication aimed at children. After all, even today, you still get people hand-wringing over queer representation in fiction aimed at children, as if queer issues are necessarily adult issues -- as if no children are queer and looking for characters in fiction who represent them. I’m glad to see that shows like Steven Universe, Adventure Time, and She-Ra series by IDW are finally offering more queer representation towards younger audiences, but a lot of fiction continues to drag its heels (including Sonic). But since I’m not bound by corporate editorial concerns, I can have queer characters in my comic.

What motivated me to re-cast Tekno as non-binary was a conversation I had with my partner last summer. I had been reading the Sonic comics again and shared some of what I’d been reading with her. When she saw a picture of Tekno, she immediately asked, “Are they an enby?” And I thought, why the heck not? Tekno had always had a very androgynous style in StC, so having had the idea put into my head, I decided to run with it. After all, there are too few queer, transgender, gender non-conforming, and non-binary characters in fiction as it is, and I want Eon's World to be a fictional universe that aims to change that. One of my biggest missions with it right now is this: MAKE IT GAYER.